


who wants to be right as rain?

by eccentrick, indigostardust



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abandonment, Child Kageyama Tobio, Future Fic, Gen, Happy Ending, Oikawa Tooru's Knee Injury, Referenced Child Neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7500915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eccentrick/pseuds/eccentrick, https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostardust/pseuds/indigostardust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some hospitals offer SafeHaven, a literal drop box for infants recently born to panicked parents. No questions asked, once you place the child into the basket, an alarm will sound ... and you can leave.   </p><p>Oikawa finds himself here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who wants to be right as rain?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Oikawa Week 2016, Day 3: Beginnings, Endings, and Green (growth).
> 
> { **Please do not create a Goodreads profile for this fic without permission. Thank you.** }

"Oikawa-san, unless you never want to walk again, you cannot play volleyball; at least not professionally." 

He was always calm, always, but Tooru never had to restrain himself more than before that moment. 

The rolling table went spinning once the doctor left the room. 

 

* * *

 

 

"I can do it," he snapped. 

Grabbing the handle on either side of his wheelchair, Tooru propelled himself out of his hospital room. His nurse, as kind as she was, was incredibly annoying with all her cheer and eagerness to help. After arguing some moments over hospital policy and how she had to accompany him in the halls, she trailed some feet behind him. He didn't want to stay in that room, to stare at the damage he caused from all his forced stumbling, purposely knocking over items left by his mother. He also didn't want to look his nurse in the eye knowing she would have to be the one to clean up his mess.

Tooru, for the day, wanted to mourn for himself, his career, his life... even if it was selfish. 

_So close._

He would apologize tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

Tooru was trying to rest his eyes in the darkened room when light cracked through the door. Agitated, his fingers twitched, thinking it was his nurse. He had specifically asked her to knock before entering, Tooru could never sleep anyway, and he didn't _care_ about getting 'sunshine and exercise'. He had apologized for the mess, but not for his mood, not yet. It seemed a hospital was where Tooru could be his true self: anxious, stressed, and generally foul with his attitude.  

He opened his mouth to let out an irritated gripe, demand what test he had to complete this time, when Tooru did not see his nurse's tall frame in the doorway. In fact, there was no one there, but it was open. He had heard it open. He knew it had been closed, slammed the door himself.

A grubby little hand gripped the edge of his blankets. 

  "Uh oh."  

Tooru let out a small yelp when two big blue eyes stared at him, bright and wide, illuminated by light pouring in from the hallway. 

"What the..." He and the child continued to stare at one another, his sheets still crumpled in the little one's hand. "Uh... Nurse?" Tooru called, his eyes never breaking contact with the child who watched him in open wonder, tracking every stunned movement. "Haiba-san?" 

He didn't hear the click of her steps coming, leaving him and the kid alone in a dark room, and it was starting to creep Tooru out. He reached for his remote to turn on the lights. When they flickered on, the kid was bathed in fluorescent light, exposing his entire being to Tooru, proving that he truly was a little boy and not some midget alien wearing human skin. 

"Alright, kid." He narrowed his eyes, now truly bothered, and by a kid of all things. "Where's your mom? You really need to go back. Shoo." Tooru motioned towards the door, hoping the kid would get some sort of a hint. 

Unlike the popular belief, he didn't think babies were dumb, except for maybe his nephew Takeru. What a nut that kid turned out to be. 

"Uh oh." The boy said again, now sticking his pointer finger in his mouth, showing two small front teeth with a bit of a gap in between. Tooru grimaced at the drool spilling. Still, he reached for the tissues left on his side table. 

Leaning over, uncaring for the twinge in his knee, he rubbed at the boy's mouth, underneath his chin, careful of being too rough on the soft baby skin. Tooru frowned when he got a better look at the child.

"I think when your mom comes, I'm going to let out all my stress onto her. Look at you," he tsked. 

He was the thinnest toddler he had seen, and that was more than his sister's second child who was like a twig by nature, for all babies had that deep neck fold, that extra bit of chub marked by a heavy line that branded the child as loved and well cared for. This child's neck fold was light and his cheeks lacked the fat to round them out to its fullest capacity. 

Heavy footsteps sounded closer and closer until Tooru caught sight of his nurse sprinting into his room.

"Oh my god, Tooru-kun, thank goodness you found him!" She was huffing, bent over and grabbing at her slim knees. "The Chief would have cut off Akane-kun's head."

"I'm really sorry for disturbing you, Tooru-kun." She continued and stepped into his room to scoop up the child with her long arms. 

Tooru didn't like that she was nearly his height when standing, but since he was confined to his bottom, she towered over him all the time. 

"We were just about to call a code for this little guy." 

She pinched the boy's thin cheek, making him go "uh oh" once more in his quiet, but clear, classic baby voice. The nurse's face lit up until her eyes flashed with knowledge. Haiba-san plopped the child right onto to Tooru's bed, next to his good knee. 

"Oh, I better radio this in." She said as a way of explaining, grabbing her radio and stepping out of the room to speak in hospital jargon Tooru was becoming all too familiar with.

The boy smacked his lips as he twisted to clamber onto Tooru's leg. "Mamama..." The sound was soft but echoed in the room as Tooru did nothing to stop the child, only watching him try to grasp around Tooru's leg like a tree trunk. "Mamamama..." 

Tooru let out a sigh, giving up his tense leg and his annoyance over a child who barged into his room. He let the kid stay where he was to make more incoherent mumbles. 

 

* * *

 

He thumbed the pages of a months old magazine, reading up on idols and their 'latest' works. Tooru knew all this information already but his room was getting boring and stuffy. 

At least here in the lobby, late in the evening, there wasn't enough people to linger their gazes on his wheelchair and his nurse didn't have to be by his side. Instead the nurse secretary at the night desk kept an eye on him.

When he heard the little "uh oh" again, it was after a weightless but surprisingly strong hand caused a slight twinge in his bad knee. Looking away from his magazine, he scowled at the child. "How did you find me again?" 

The toddler only grinned in response, showing off his teeth and scrunching his nose. 

"Shouldn't you be asleep by now?" Tooru asked, setting his magazine down after looking at the clock. 

It was just after eight, but weren't babies supposed to sleep for most of the day?

The little boy pressed his bad knee again and Tooru grit his teeth. Oh, are you kidding me? His eyes bugged as the pain continued until he realized the boy was trying to climb up into wheelchair. 

He muttered curses under his breath, mild ones. Tooru had some sensibilities about him. Grumbling, he reached over to pick up the child and sit him in his lap. 

"Tobio-chan, you have to stop running off like this." 

Tooru looked up from the toddler to find he met the level gaze of the pediatric nurse who picked up _Tobio_ earlier in the day. He glanced back at the kid in his lap, fussy and moving. He thought the name fit. 

"He must really like you." The nurse raised her brows at him, a hint of a smirk played at her lips. 

"Please take him away." 

The smirk turned into a full grin when the nurse thrust a bottle into Tooru's face. "Know how to feed a baby? It's past this kid's bed time, but he's been too fussy to lay still. He seems rather fine there in your arms, though." 

Tooru returned with his best glare while the nurse's grin never faulted. "You're evil," he muttered, snatching the bottle from her waiting hand. 

He shifted the baby, Tobio, he reminded himself, in his arms, nestling the small head full of inky black hair into the crook of his elbow and laid out Tobio's legs across his own. 

Tobio took the bottle immediately, the same grubby hands gripped the sides tight. Tooru watched as Tobio suckled milk with giant gulps, bigger than his body, surely. 

"Hey," he shushed in efforts of calming Tobio's chugging. "Slow down."

The Yamamoto girl giggled beside him, setting herself into the waiting room chair with a bounce. "You've done this before." 

Tooru couldn't shrug, couldn't huff with spite or indifference or pride with Tobio slowly falling asleep in his arms. He had to answer her, instead. "I have a nephew I used to babysit." 

"Yamamoto Akane." She extended her hand. "And that kiddo you're holding is Tobio." 

"Oikawa Tooru." He nodded, briefly grasping her clammy fingers. He returned his gaze to watch blue eyes lose consciousness and fall into whatever dreamland only children could enter. 

Somewhere his own dreams went to die.

 

* * *

 

 _He's a bit old for the SafeHaven drop, honestly, but we had to take him in regardless. His mom left him in the drop zone with nothing but a note, no personal items._  Yamamoto had told him when Tobio had fallen into a heavy sleep. _A social worker is coming in tomorrow afternoon to pick him up,  a bit late because of the holiday weekend and all._

Tooru felt his future slip through his fingers. Ever since he first injured his knee, his hands, cradled together, became an hourglass. 

Every twinge he felt in practice, every wince and gasp of pain he suffocated before it could fall from his parted lips, every smile that hid a grimace was a grain falling in between his locked fingers. His grip slowly lost strength against the pressure built. 

Now, he laid in a hospital bed, bitter as the last minuscule grams fell to the ground. A few stubborn grains stuck to his fingers, like a child playing in a sand box, but he knew it was over. He would have no career.   

He wished to be as young as Tobio, to go back, gather up the sand and fill his body with it. Except Tobio's body wouldn't do, because Tobio was somewhere else in the sterile hospital pouring out sand in waves onto the tiled floors.

Tobio says it perfectly, "Uh oh." 

 

* * *

 

Tooru heard the familiar garbled sounds, simple consonants and vowels, behind him and inwardly he cursed again. He was out for another stroll through the halls with Ali-chan (she demanded he call her so, tired of his Haiba-san bullshit) the next morning.

Why is this kid always following me around? 

"Alisa-kun!" He turned just in time to see Yamamoto waving at them as she and Tobio caught up to them. 

"Hello, Akane-kun." Alisa greeted back just as brightly. "Where are you two headed?" 

"I'm taking Tobio-chan here up to see the nursery, give him something new to look at." The short nurse shrugged. "Who knows, maybe some couple will take pity on him and adopt Tobio before going home. Like a two for one deal." 

"Akane-kun! That's not right, and you know it." 

Tooru rolled his eyes at the two of them, keeping a close eye on Tobio lest the child thinks he's some kind of jungle gym again. Thankfully, the kid was distracted by the pacifier in his mouth. 

"I'm just kidding." Yamamoto playfully pushed at Alisa's arm. Tooru took that as sign to start rolling again, he found their flirting annoying. "We're heading back to pedes because I have to fill out some charting and Tobio doesn't like to be left alone." 

"Hey, Tooru-kun. Tobio can't walk that far or that fast. Mind placing him on your lap?" 

Tooru turned the same glare he used on Yamamoto the night before on his nurse who continued to smile bright enough to rival the lights above them. 

They were both evil.

 

* * *

 

He rested a palm against the glass of the nursery. Tapping the glass once, lightly, he stared at the pastel blankets that swathed the newborns. Pinks, blues, yellows, and a green that matched the color of Tooru's own hospital blanket when he was born. His was faded now, surely, but the mellow color was vivid in his mind still. 

Tooru was good at holding onto long memories, and sometimes, where his knee and volleyball were concerned, it was an unlucky skill.

"Do you want to know why I like babies? Particularly between the ages of zero to one?" Yamamoto's wild red hair appeared in his peripheral vision, bouncing with every step she took closer to him. 

Somewhere in the next room, Tobio was playing with the other children around his age in the pediatric's playroom.  

"No," he groused, taking back his hand and curling it up into a fist in his lap. 

The nurse turned away to stare into the infirmary, much like he was doing, watching the infants wail or sleep soundly. It was about noon, and the babies were either nodding into a nap or fussing for their mothers. 

"They love you." She said, still not looking back at Tooru, but he could see the soft smile in her reflection. Yamamoto rested her hands on her hips. "Completely, purely, without restriction. All that love packed into 3.2 kilograms and 50 centimeters. And the best part?" 

She glanced at Tooru, waiting for him to meet her dark gaze. He wasn't sure how she was a pediatrics nurse, with her barbed personality and loud voice, but he supposed it was her eyes. They seemed to echo the wisdom and warmth only the void could have. Maybe babies liked that. 

"They don't judge you. They don't care what you've done, where you're from, what social graces you follow. They just want you to smile at them and love them, at least for right now." 

Tooru wanted to tell her that she was stupid, all that hairspray she used only left fumes in her head, that she clearly had her head in the clouds. They were just babies. Tooru liked kids well enough, his nephew being a true testament to that after the amount of times he puked on Tooru and pulled his hair. He just wasn't disillusioned so much to think babies were capable of complex ideas like the purity of love, let alone giving it. 

He really was going to tell her these things, because he was still bitter and disillusioned in the sense that he had given up on hope, but he couldn't. 

Not when a small hand gripped his sweatpants and dark blue eyes were looking up at him. 

 

* * *

 

Tooru had his whole life ahead of him, that's what everyone kept telling him. He was 22, good looking with a good college degree, and healthy (knee not included). He hated those words. 

Tooru felt like his life had ended. 

He was in Tobio's room this time, after following Yamamoto and Alisa, because he had nothing else to do and he didn't feel like sulking in his dark room alone. The white curtains were drawn to filter the sunlight and relax Tobio into a nap. His social worker would be here in an hour or so, and well, Tooru wanted to say goodbye to the pestering kid whose only word wasn't actually a word. 

He pushed his wheelchair up close to Tobio's crib. Tooru would be leaving the hospital the next morning as well. It seemed fitting. They arrived the same night and would, more or less, be leaving hours apart. 

On the side table, Yamamoto rested the bottle to pick up later before plugging in her stethoscope to check Tobio's vitals. 

Next to his now empty bottle, there was a folded scrap of paper. His fingers reached for it. Yamamoto didn't stop him, though she watched him pick it up. 

_His name is Kageyama Tobio. I will miss him; please tell him that._

Tooru couldn't help the curl of his fingers around the note. He glanced back at the sleeping child in the crib, thin but full of innocence and the type of love Yamamoto talked about. The note wasn't even signed, no name, no clue, just a line of messy scrawl. He couldn't imagine the type of person who could leave an overgrown baby in the middle of the hospital and then try to make it up by missing the child. 

It sounded an awful lot like his own personal narrative with his volleyball career, in a different sense. In either case, both he and Tobio were forcibly turned away, dumped into the middle of real life, left to their own devices with only a simple _I'll miss you_. 

He set the note back down on the table and moved closer to the crib. 

Tobio wasn't asleep yet, but clearly fighting against the lurking at his consciousness to stare back up at Tooru. He rested his forearm against the top of the crib wall, then propped his chin to watch the baby. 

He was 22, good looking with a good college degree, and healthy. A section of his life, the majority of it had snapped shut and incinerated itself into ashes. Tooru reached his other arm down to trace Tobio's soft cheeks, soft as a baby's should be. 

Tobio was estimated to be one years old, a cute and fairly healthy baby if a bit underfed. Like him, Tobio's short life had already closed a door. His tiny, with just a bit of chub, hand reached up when Tooru's own had begun to pull away. Small fingers wrapped around the finger he had used to touch Tobio. 

They would both have to find a new window to reinvent their lives, a new life to create for themselves. They had to find something new to place their worth in. Something to devote themselves to, to live for.  

"Yama-chan," he whispered but didn't take his eyes off Tobio's drooping eyelids. "Please call the social worker and say there's a change of plans."

"Tell him to bring adoption papers instead." 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is definitely a fic we plan on continuing sometime down the road, where we will shift to an Iwaoi centric fic and pick up five years after this chapter. If this interests you, please feel free to subscribe!


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